Removed from his family at the age of three, Roy Stewart never knew where he came from. He was told his government records had been destroyed in a fire.

He died in 2005 aged 77 - his sleep haunted, according to his wife, Vilma, by the memory of the boys who died at the notorious Kinchela Boys home.

"I guess my father's response to the apology would be the same as mine. He would have just cried because those other kids didn't make it. That cut him real deep," Mr Stewart said.

He said his father relayed horrific stories of having to bury other boys who had been bashed to death by drunken supervisors.

"That sort of stuff, the word 'sorry' doesn't come near what he went through. They can apologise in a thousand different ways without saying sorry. Actions speak louder than words."

Words would not make up for having to wait longer than white people to see a doctor in 2008 - as Norman's son, Jason Stewart, said he did last week - or for the "KKK" graffiti that appeared on the local Aboriginal land council's offices in Ashford, for the cousin who had to leave the police force because his boss called him "boy", or the almost 30 years Norman's brother Harold has spent in institutions.

Harold Stewart, 49, has 56 counts on his criminal record, he said, most of them for driving offences and bar fights - a vice he learned in a Mittagong boys' home after being forcibly removed from a Narrabri playground in the 1960s, aged nine.

The institution was a "training ground for jail", he said. "You'd have your first fight on day one. They'd throw another bloke at you on day two and rate you, that sort of thing."

Neil, who is Norman and Harold's brother, was removed at the same time and was still lost to his family. "We know he's down there in Sydney living on the streets but he will probably be dead and buried before we can find him," Norman said.

Vilma's parents and Norman's grandparents, Robert and Maud, were also raised in institutions.

Norman, a 56-year-old former truck driver, said the effects were intergenerational and created a host of other issues for indigenous people.

"Our mother, our sons and great-grandsons, they are all feeling the repercussions of what happened because we can be walking down the street and see a Stewart and they say, 'Where do you come from?', because that's protocol with Aboriginal people, and we don't know."

On Monday, Norman and his wife, Mary, took in three-year-old Maureen, who was removed by welfare officers from a nearby indigenous family. They have raised nine foster children in their role as registered kinship carers.

For Maureen's generation, reconciliation would take more than words, Jason said.

But Norman remained optimistic. "This generation is the most rebellious I have known. Kids today, if their parents tell them not to play with an Aboriginal kid or an Italian friend, they don't care. I see prejudice dying out with the older generation."

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